Senescence, the Last Half of Life

by G. Stanley Hall

Responses here differed very widely but certain common traits appear. Those who grow deaf are often condemned to a progressive solitude and this affliction has a pathos of its own. The friends we knew in youth and college are scattered and most of them, and perhaps most members of our own family, are dead, so that associates of our own age are generally very few. But besides this the old often develop idiosyncrasies highly distasteful to others and we find complaints of the stupidity or querulousness of other old people. Despite the fact that we have occasional instances of intimate friendships in the latest decades of life, the herd instinct that prompts each to flock with those of near his or her own years is less insistent, while with happily married pairs even love seems to take on the character of friendship. There is, indeed, no doubt that the gregarious instinct tends to wane, and as men advance in years they tend to withdraw from clubs and associations, not only because of infirmities but because increased individuation is itself isolative. On the other hand, I think we detect, not only in these returns but in life, a tendency to prefer associates of the next generation, that is, those of such an age that they might have been our own children. Some old men especially state that they prefer the society of men of middle life and it has often been thought that young teachers are best for young and older teachers for older children and that the young have a certain attraction for those near the age limits of their parents. A few of the very old like children, but often with reservations or best at a distance, and are prone to be annoyed by their noise or too great familiarity. It is pretty clear that age does incline to youth and perhaps becomes dependent on it for a kind of vicarious rejuvenation. Old professors often feel in a peculiarly close rapport with those of student years but this is partly due to habit. The old sometimes take, with peculiar interest, to pets and not infrequently have strong likes and dislikes, which they can only explain on the basis of congeniality or antipathy.

There can be no question that old people to-day are just as fond of acting as mentors for the young as they were in ancient Greece, although now it takes the very different form of a propensity to give advice and warnings. But our civilization has not yet found effective ways of making even god-fathers and -mothers really sponsors or assistant parents, although the teaching instinct is closely allied to the parental and is more or less developed in all. It is the testimony of those familiar with old people’s homes that their inmates do not tend to fraternize and although crony friendships are not infrequent, there is no analogy to “mashes” or “crushes.” Indeed, pessimists have often intimated that no one could really love very old people and so far as this is true we could hardly expect them to love even each other in return.

The above applies more to men than women and the case seems quite different with the latter, who are much more prone to be interested in the young, even in the very young, than are old men. The grandmother may lavish too much, while the grandfather gives too little, attention to the grandchildren. On the other hand, both are often very critical of the larger liberties allowed to and taken by children and find it hard to adjust to new notions and social customs and especially to the now rapidly increasing license given to both their conversation and conduct, which can hardly be said, in its turn, to involve greater respect for age than formerly.

Would you live your life over again?

All answered this question, but three could not decide. One had found it all so enjoyable that he would gladly start over again and repeat all identically. One recoiled “with horror” at the thought and rejoiced every week that it was ended forever. Even the pleasant experiences had such an alloy or aftermath of pain that one subject could not bear the thought of repeating a moment of it.

“What is the use?” said another. “I would probably do the same thing over again.” Some would live parts of their lives again or begin at a certain stage. Most would repeat it if they could start with some of their present knowledge or experience and thus improve upon what they had been or done. Most, too, had such a sense of progress that it would seem painful to them to go back to more primitive conditions. Two felt so assured of progress beyond the grave that the future drew them more than the past. One did not see how his life could be materially improved for he had fallen victim to no temptations, made very few mistakes, etc.; while many specified often radical changes they would make, errors or mistakes they would avoid, etc. There were no expressions of remorse; no bitter imprecations of fate, heredity, or nature; no vain longings for rejuvenation; and these data suggest that the vivid pleasures of childhood, the joys of youth, and the intoxication with life that characterizes its immature stages had vanished and left no trace in the memory of these respondents, or perhaps that life had palled and brought a certain satiety. One said:

I have lived three more or less independent lives, as naturalist and explorer for the love of it, as science teacher for the love of it, and as administrator because I knew men and the value of money; and finally, as a matter of duty, as a minor prophet of democracy. If I had the chance I would take them all again. There is pleasure in it and the world badly needs men willing to be counted in the minority.

In the attitude of these old people to this problem the psychologist can glimpse a little of the tedium vitæ that perhaps first produced and then discarded the Oriental doctrine of eternal recurrence of life and death, a psychic trend that gave birth to and vitalized metempsychosis and that impelled the Buddha to break away and find a goal beyond it. It needs little psychology to see that such attitudes of mind imply a deep dissatisfaction with any form of future existence that would be in essence a repetition of life here, even with moderate improvements on our present state of existence. A postmortem form of survival or revival that is, in any large sense, a reduplication of this could never bring a deep satisfaction. All ancient creeds and all modern philosophies of recurrence, for example, that of Nietzsche, have always been strongholds of pessimism and are really anti-evolutionary, although they are sometimes said to presage modern theories of development.

To the genetic philosopher it would seem, from such data, that senescents tend to lose the sense that infancy and childhood are more generic than adulthood, that the latter brings the “shades of the prisonhouse,” and that every stage of individual development brings added limitations, so that our matured consciousness is only a very partial expression of the vaster life of the race, most of which is more and more repressed and incapable of coming to consciousness as life proceeds. If each of us might have lived very different lives from what we have done, and if many and varied lives are required to express all the possibilities with which we all start, it would seem as if each individual would have chosen, when he had played one part, to assume another in the comédie humaine and then another, and so on; that the slave would want to complement his defects of opportunity by becoming king—if not, indeed, vice versa. When the psychic life of the race was young and rank, great minds did dream even of living out every phase and stage of life: of being animals, of experiencing every lot and station of humanity. But now that the world is older and the hyperindividuation that comes with age has supervened, this passion to taste everything possible to our estate is lost. Instead of sampling every dish we make a full meal of one and other viands are refused for we are sated. Biology teaches, as we have seen, that specialization is death and a hypertrophied personal consciousness is psychic specialization.

For myself, I confess I even retain in old age some vestige of my strong childish desire to be a horse, lion, ape, dog, fish, and even insect; or, in a word, to know how the world looks from under the skull of our older brothers, the beasts. Still stronger is the wish to have lived as a troglodyte, Indian, to have been a fire-worshiper, totemist, a woman, millionaire, tramp, or even a moron or a genius—if not, in some moods, to have experienced various insanities and even diseases. But strangest of all is the wish that I could be set back to happy childhood, even if it had to be with the smallest modicum of the experience I have acquired, and try the game of life again. It has been, on the whole, so fortunate that I would even repeat it identically, if I had to, rather than to face the future I do. But the chief charm would be not so much to improve it and avoid errors but to vary it and give my more generic self a less one-sided expression so as to bring out latencies that are suppressed or slumber and to invest the same old self with a new set of attributes. I have only seen one very small aspect of life and know but a single corner of my own soul and my knowledge of the world is too limited to my own narrow specialty. The future not only of my department but of all lines of human activity is so full of possibilities yet unrealized but which have aroused such eagerness of interest, that I would accept another life here under almost any terms in order to see the swelling drama unfold; while I revolt unspeakably at the realization that I must be cut off when so many things in which I have the keenest zest are in the most critical or interesting phase of their development.